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Posts published in March 2006

Running with, running from

March 31, 2006

Over on the Horse's Ass blog a commenter reported on a Google experiment he ran, to see on how many web pages the word "Bush" - as in President George W. - showed up on the web site of Republican Senate candidate Mike McGavick. The answer was: none.

This seemed an intriguing tidbit, so we checked it out. We ran the check and got the same result. Then we switched to Democratic Senator Maria Cantwell's campaign site and ran the same search. The answer this time: 11 pages.

Is this is a trend?

If you move to what may be the most strongly contested House race in Washington, in the 8th district, the campaign site for Republican incumbent Dave Reichert has 105 pages with "Bush" in it - supposedly; but most of those seem to be empty placekeeper pages. And try searching for "Bush" or "George Bush" using the campaign's own search tool, and you get 0 responses. Try the Google experiment on the site of Reichert's Democratic opponent, Darcy Burner, and you get 35 hits on what mostly seem to be real pages.

The campaign web site for 5th District Representative Cathy McMorris turned up no hits. In the 4th District, Republican Doc Hastings' site did bring up eight Bush pages.

In the case of Oregon's lone Republican U.S. representative, Greg Walden, a Google search says his campaign site mentions "Bush" only once, in a reprint of a newspaper article.

There tend to be more references on the campaign web sites of Republicans in red Idaho.

But without pressing the point too far, it does seem reasonable to say that in Washington and Oregon, a number of Republicans are stepping cautiously in linking themselves to the White House these days.

Vetoes a’plenty

March 31, 2006

Not sure what this means, whether good or bad. But it does seem noteowrthy that when Washington Governor Christine Gregoire got herself a Democratic-controlled legislature with which she worked relatively closely and appeared to get on well, and in a short and efficient session, she nonetheless kept her veto action highly active.

Not sure, as indicated, what this means. But she has so far vetoed or partially vetoed at least 23 pieces of legislation this year. (more…)

In the remotest redlands

March 31, 2006

Gooding, Idaho's namesake was Frank Gooding, a governor of Idaho around the turn of the century and one of the state's most ferocious Republicans ever. And one of the founders, as a practical matter, of what is now the Idaho Republican Party. You'd expect that the place named after him - both county and its seat - would be Republican. It most certainly is. The only tinge of Democrats you'll find here is the county's link, as part of a legislative district, to Blaine County, which outvotes it and sends those Democratic legislative delegations to Boise.

Gooding is a farm town and food processing place, a whole lot like many of the small towns in southern Idaho. It is conservative Republican.

So how is it that an apparently lively chapter of Drinking Liberally is running there?

It meets on Fridays at Rowdy's Pub and Grill. And it is lively enough to have scheduled a list of guests running forward to May 12, including a batch of statewide candidates include Jerry Brady (for governor) and Larry La Rocco (for lieutenant governor).

Boise and Moscow chapters are easier to fathom. Gooding takes us into a whole new plane . . .

A Bend in the TV picture

March 30, 2006

Not many local TV markets have been really transformed by key station additions in the last couple of decades; not many have grown from small one-station markets to full-blown competition between all the major contenders.

According to today's Bend Bulletin, it's happening in Central Oregon - the first palce to close from minor t0 middle market status in the Northwest in a couple of decades.

KTVZ-TV, which has been an affiliate of NBC, long has been the only important TV player there. Bend residents get the other nets from their Portland affiliates via satellite or cable. The only other local Bend station is KFXO-FOX, a Fox affiliate without local news. KTVZ for years has been walloping it, taking about 84%-16% of local viewership in the ratings.

But on April 17 KFXO is planning to launch local news, which should increase their share somewhat.

Maybe more significantly, Chambers Communications Corporation of Eugene (which runs KEZI9 ABC - Eugene, KDKF31 ABC - Klamath Falls, and KDRV12 ABC - Medford) was reported as planning a new station - presumably, given its other assets, an ABC affiliate - for Bend. If that happens, can CBS be far behind?

All this may have some domino effects, with the reach of Portland broadcast media considerably abbreviated in eastern Oregon. This is worth watching closely.

Sempra’s out

March 29, 2006

In a month of substantial Idaho news, this ranks close to the top: Announcement this morning that Sempra Inc. will abandon its plans to build a massive coal-fired plant near Jerome.

Sempra logoSempra was departing, clearly, because its plans have caused an uproar. We've heard from Magic Valley people that the public sentiment there is "nearly unanimous" against it. It must be, if you consider the atittude of the legislature, which was on the verge of passing a two-year moratorium against construction of the plant. That Democratic state Senator Clint Stennett of Ketchum would jump early out in front on this wasn't a great shock, and his position developed as increasingly "anti" over time.

But Republicans in the Idaho Legislature hardly ever adopt something that would be construed as an anti-business stance, and for quite a while many of them seemed reluctant to do that even in this case. But the pressure from back home must have ben fierce. House Speaker Bruce Newcomb led a push on one major Sempra-limiting proposal, and the House passed it, and so did a Senate committee, and the Senate was on the verge of agreeing . . . when Sempra backed out today.

That might not have been the end of the situation. Sempra has strong political pull nationally. The Senate vote was not completely foregone. And then there was the matter of Govenror Dirk Kempthorne, nominated as secretary of the Interior in the Bush Administration, which looks kindly on projects like the one Sempra has proposed. More than that: Sempra and the Bush Administration turn out to be close buddies on a number of matters, from energy development in Mexico (one report notes "A Department of Energy report said Sempra Energy International is the only U.S.-based company with significant involvement in Mexico's natural gas infrastructure") to California energy politics. Would a Kempthorne veto be out of the question?

It's a foregone question now, and the main reason may be this: Sempra is holding a major alanyst conference today, and probably wants to start focusing more on positive news rather than the growing populist revolt up in Idaho. Which they well be sick of by this point.

There may be a larger point in Sempra President Michael Niggli's statement that this development may "seriously compromise the willingness of investors to develop energy projects at a time when the state most needs to plan and attrach investment in energy infrastructure to meet Idaho's future needs." We suspect that to the extent those energy projects would have the kind of impact this one might have had, quite a few Idahoans are likely to respond, "just as well."

Breakaway point

March 28, 2006

Adate to conjure with on Oregon's calendar: April 3 has been set as the day Portland General Electric formally becomes an independent company once again, and splits off from Enron.

A good thing, most Oregonians will agree, whatever comes next.

April 3 is apt to change the tenor of the debate. It's one thing when you're blasting away at a corrupt and faraway Enron, rather a different when it's your own homegrown utility. More or less.

Demonstrating viability

March 27, 2006

Credit the Ben Westlund people with getting their message right out there. Running an independent campaign for governor of Oregon isn't an easy proposition, but they're doing a number of things right so far.

Alongside the promotion [in their e-mail newsletter; no permalink available] for opening their campaign headquarters (on Wednesday) in Bend (okay, but they really do need a branch office in the Willamette somewhere), the Westlund campaign casually tossed in a reference to Friday as the close of the next campaign reporting period.

They can still fundraise the rest of this week but they note, "Already 385 people and businesses have contributed or pledged nearly $300,000 to our campaign."

Not bad. Will be intersting to do the comparisons with other campaigns (especially once we see what the others have left after their primaries, a concern Westlund can bypass).

Traffic tickets

March 26, 2006

On the short list of political liabilities Democratic Senator Maria Cantwell has to deal with this year - and one happily noted by conservatives at Sound Politics and elsewhere - has been the Senate candidacy of Aaron Dixon.

Aaron DixonDixon is a former Black Panther who is seeking the Green Party nomination, evidently after a number of Greens asked him to run. He is coming at Cantwell from the left, blasting her (as his website shows) for her initial support of the Iraq war and for her vote to reauthorize the Patroit Act, and for refusing to filibuster the Supreme Court appointment of Samuel Alito. Overall, it's a message with some resonance in Seattle and some other places in the state, and whatever votes Dixon would get with it presumably would come out of the hide of Cantwell, rather than her Republican challenger, Mike McGavick.

The portions of the left who see Cantwell as imperfect but the only real option to a Republican takeover of the seat have not been idle. Joel Connelly of the Seattle Post Intelligencer last week warned about the dangers of a split on the left "Cantwell's vilification by the left bizarre").

And David Goldstein of the Horse's Ass blog has taken matters a step further. He and his readers have assembled a remarkable case against Dixon through a public records inquiry. As summed up in the Eat the State Blog (run by Seattle Weekly writer Geov Parrish):

1) Eighteen criminal charges in the last 17 years, most (but not all) for traffic violations and unpaid traffic fines.
2) Massive debts from dozens of unpaid fines in both Seattle Municipal Court and King County District Court. A number are for driving without insurance (and yes, he can afford it.)
3) Dixon claims on his web site that the woman he currently lives with (and who is his campaign media contact) is his wife. She isn’t, and she’d better not be. He’s still in the process of divorcing his last wife.
4) And he owes thousands in unpaid child support to yet another ex.
5) Not only has Dixon not voted since registering in 1998 (which was reported Thursday), but he’s never voted before that, either. In other words, he’s never voted in King County. Ever, over an adult life spanning nearly 40 years. And his inactive voter registration lists a now-invalid address.

A problematic start, at best, to a campaign. With the probability that another roadblock has been cleared from Cantwell's path.

Separation of everybody and state

March 25, 2006

We're not going to argue here that Oregon legislative services are logally in the wrong in their contention that state legislators' web sites should not - under legal and ethical guidelines - include links to non-governmental web areas.

There's some grayness to the top, but you could make a case that they're right. Legally. And that their decision to take down all individual legislator pages to strip them of non-government links was justifiable.

The larger question is, should that be the law?

There's not an absolute in this area. People would have good cause to object if, for example, the state treasurer's web site carried a link to a bank, or if the state forestry web site linked to their favorite restaurant, or some other to a church.

Surely, though, there's a reasonably distinction between that and the things legislators have routinely been linking to. (None of those links, apparently, was the subject of a complaint or a specific tripwire for the removal action.) They've been linking to community service organizations, non-profits, occasionally to a chanber of commerce, sometimes to news stories. Most of them fall either into the category of "here's where you can go to help your community" or "here's some more information." And legislators are, after all, in the business of trafficking in ideas and information - that's what their job is about. Surely there's nothing wrong with that kind of dissemination.

Today's Oregonian news article on this quoted freshman Representative Kim Thatcher, R-Keizer, as suggesting that the system is self-correcting: If legislators post something inappropriate on their sites, they'll hear about it and likely correct it. She also said she may introduce legislation in the next session (if she returns) to allow non-governmental links.

Indeed: You can take the matter of purity a step or two too far.